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Why AMD’s notebook prospects are looking up

AMD's mobile graphics prospects are looking up, with a raft of major HP design …

If you're looking for notebook power on the cheap and you're not too keen on either using Intel's integrated graphics or paying for a higher-performing, NVIDIA-made workaround (i.e., Optimus), then there's an obvious alternative mobile platform for you: AMD/ATI. AMD is gaining steam in the mobile space due to a combination of low cost and its ATI Radeon graphics solution, with Reuters reporting that the company will better than double the number of design wins this back-to-school season compared to a year ago.

HP, for instance, announced a huge revamp of its mobile lineup on Friday, and AMD was in the bulk of the new models on both the consumer and business side. In fact, many of the new notebooks are available only with AMD—Intel inside is not an option. This is a huge victory for AMD, one that looks to be part of an ongoing winning streak.

Jon Peddie Research's most recent report on the graphics space for the first quarter of 2010 shows AMD taking about six percent of the total graphics market share from Intel, with NVIDIA staying about flat at 31.5 percent. Intel dropped from 49.7 percent market share in the first quarter of 2009 to 43.5, and AMD jumped from 17.1 percent to 24.0 percent in that same period. These numbers are for total graphics market share, which includes both integrated graphics processors (IGP) and the newly launched integrated processor graphics (IPG). Part of Intel's market share loss is no doubt due to the shortage of Arrandale processors. AMD saw its biggest boost in mobile graphics, according to JPR, which suggests that the scarcity of Intel's mobile CPU/IPG combo may have taken a toll.

AMD seems to have some momentum on its side, and it's worth pausing for a moment to think about the chipmaker's advantage here.

IGP vs. IPG

The first quarter of 2010 saw the dawn of a new acronym and the start of a major shift in the PC hardware market—the move from integrated graphics processors to integrated processor graphics. In the former, the GPU is integrated into the chipset's northbridge, while in the latter, the CPU is in the same package or on the same die as the processor (e.g., Intel's Clarksdale and Arrandale 32nm parts, with in-package GPUs).

AMD doesn't have an IPG offering yet, but it doesn't yet need one. The thing that's making AMD attractive, apart from price (and price is a major factor), is that Intel's IPG just isn't that great. It's a lot better than it once was, but it's still no match for IGPs from NVIDIA or AMD.

The problem with having a not-so-great GPU in the same package as the processor die is that if you want to buy Intel's latest and greatest mobile CPU, you have to buy its GPU along with it. So you have to pay for this GPU that isn't very good and that you may not want, and then if you want real graphics performance you have to then go out and pay for an NVIDIA GPU to go with it (via Optimus or Apple's proprietary solution).

NVIDIA's Optimus is definitely a win-win for Intel, NVIDIA, and Intel users, because it gives Intel's customers the option of a better GPU that and a platform that can dynamically optimize its graphics performance to fit the running workload. But if you stack it up against a traditional CPU + IGP combination, like that which AMD offers, it's hard to imagine that all that all the shuffling graphics data back and forth between the GPU's private pool of DDR3 and the framebuffer that sits in system memory doesn't burn extra power.

In other words, from an engineering perspective, it would be better to have a more efficient IGP, where you do all your dynamic power optimization by turning on and off parts of the IGP, than it is to have two IGPs—a weak one and a strong one—and switch back and forth between those two depending on workload. Intel users are sort of stuck with the latter, more coarse-grained, system-level form of power optimization, while AMD can do the former by just focusing on making its single IGP very efficient across a range of performance points.

Ultimately, Arrandale's CPU is just plain better (it's a whole process node ahead, which is key for mobile, and the Nehalem microarchitecture is superior), but Intel has hung a dud of a GPU around its neck and has forced users who want better performance to resort to exotic system-level solutions like Optimus. This misstep has left a door open for AMD to walk right through with a saner and more conventional solution. And because AMD not only offers better graphics performance but is cheaper to boot, notebook makers (and probably users) are increasingly going to opt for the AMD mobile platform.

Actually I'm not quite sure if the GPU situation is enough to explain the current upsurge of AMD design wins; after all, Intel had a crap IGP even before integrating it into the processor package, and it sure as hell didn't have a problem grabbing the lion's share of the notebook market regardless. So there has to be something more behind this. Is the (temporary) shortage of Arrandale chips really causing that much trouble to Intel? Is the fact that Intel is now bound by its settlement with AMD showing what the market should have been like all these years, without anticompetitive behaviour? Something else? Any takers?

But in the case that the GPU is enough to explain this trend, then I must say that the prospects of Llano next year are really looking good. I mean, if AMD can provide an integrated part with decent overall power consumption and enough graphics horsepower to blow away whatever Intel is offering, it's going to end up with a real winner in its hands.

I'm pretty sure this also has a lot to do with the fact that Intel has been having a hard time meeting demand for the new Arrandale processors, and while they probably still have stock/capacity to produce more Core 2 Duos, no one wants to buy that anymore (Intel has been marketing Core i3/i5/i7 heavily so consumers understand that Core 2 is an old hat now).

I also think it might have something to do with AMD's ability to deliver tri/quad cores much more cheaply than Intel. From the perspective of a company making a consumer product that is a big deal. Why buy an Intel dual core when you can have a AMD quad core for the same price? That is the marketing angle that will be pushed, I'm sure.

I'm pretty sure this also has a lot to do with the fact that Intel has been having a hard time meeting demand for the new Arrandale processors, and while they probably still have stock/capacity to produce more Core 2 Duos, no one wants to buy that anymore (Intel has been marketing Core i3/i5/i7 heavily so consumers understand that Core 2 is an old hat now).

I also think it might have something to do with AMD's ability to deliver tri/quad cores much more cheaply than Intel. From the perspective of a company making a consumer product that is a big deal. Why buy an Intel dual core when you can have a AMD quad core for the same price? That is the marketing angle that will be pushed, I'm sure.

Its not that Intel can't make them cheaply its that they're taking huge margins because they have the superiority perception to do so.

AMD these days gets more crap for their CPU's than Intel got for the Pentium line.

I'm kinda wondering how Intel expects to catch up in graphics, as this is clearly becoming a pressing issue.

Larrabee sucked so bad it didn't even fail, and acquiring Nvidia would probably be difficult for antitrust reasons. The R&D to make a competitive GPU would take years, and might not be competitive by the time it came out.

Maybe they'll do what they did with PowerVR graphics in some of their Atom systems and license a GPU, this time from Nvidia.

Would Llano really offer better graphics performance than the GP units on Arrandale, though? It's not like they'll be sticking the hardware from a Radeon 3200 onto the CPU die. Though I bet AMD will leave the option to add an IGP onto the motherboard, or at least discrete graphics in the traditional way.

With respect to IGP's and graphics performance, the capability/quality is only really essential in consumer level graphics application (and in fact, AMD owns a good portion of this share, at one point reaching 80% in retail -- thats desktop and mobile combined).

Where Intel holds the advantage is in the enterprise sector, which does not really care if it can run Quake 4 at 25 FPS at low quality settings like AMD or nVidia can, they don't even care if it can decode a Blu-Ray stream -- it simply is not important to an IT manager selecting hardware for the employee base to enable them to frag or watch movies. What they want is stable hardware with which they can build an image and have it last x amount of time. Intel's IGPs are perfectly capable, it is a case of 'good' enough.

AMD will certainly improve their position, no doubt, but it is not their IGP that is critical. In mobile computing, battery life trumps graphics capability in most applications. Gaming laptops are cool, fun and what not, but hard core gamers still like their 24" screens with discrete graphics for the best experience. So, in consumer markets, I think that the IGP delta is certainly a differentiator in purchasing decisions, for enterprise I am not so sure this is a critical selling point.

AMD these days gets more crap for their CPU's than Intel got for the Pentium line.

This is so true! It's not even like the performance of the AMD chips is any kind of terrible - just a LITTLE bit slower than Intel's latest and greatest. My experience has always been that the graphics hardware was the greatest performance differentiator anyway. All of AMd and Intel's current CPUs are pretty much grossly over powered for what the vast majority of people do with their PCs (Office, web). The AMD line is pretty good, even if you're a gamer.

My gaming rig is an Athlon II x4 620 overclocked from 2.6Ghz to 3.25Ghz with a Radeon 5830 and 4GB of DDR 3 running Win 7 Ultimate. I gotta tell you, I can run all of my games at full detail at my 20" LCD's max res of 1600x900 (latest being Dawn of War II, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age, Supreme Commander 2, etc). All of these items are pretty inexpensive and max out all of my games. Video Encodes are better than reasonable. What advantage would I have spending 2-3x as much to go Intel i7?

Yeah, they all are. I don't think proprietary is what the author meant. I think what he meant to say is Apple's exclusive and unique solution. But that would probably just anger the trolls to say something flattering to Apple in any way

When AMD bought ATI I thought they would screw it up like Intel does whenever they buy a graphics chip company (such as Chips and Technology--I wonder if they are going to buy Imagination Technologies?)

So now AMD can take advantage of Intel's weakness, which is the fact that they want to control the graphics and put it in the same package, and are therefore always at war with NVidia, which is the chip most gamers want to use with Intel processors. It seems like their ego sense gets in the way of their business sense.

You know, this makes me think about those "Apple to AMD" rumors that were flying around a few months ago. Don't get me wrong, I still don't think Apple's going to move their whole line over to AMD... but the 13" Macbook Pros? You know, the ones Apple didn't refresh the hardware on since it'd be too difficult to cram an Arrandale chip + the southbridge + the nVidia GPU in there? Those might just go AMD.

Optimus would, in fact, be an absolutely perfect all-around option for notebook makers... if someone other than ASUS would pick the damn thing up, on more than just 2 models. Right now, having Optimus means being locked into one of two ASUS laptop offerings. I really don't understand why, in the several months that nVidia has had Optimus in the wild, no mainstream OEMs (Dell, HP, Gateway, Toshiba, Sony, etc...) have picked up on the tech. Only Apple has made a spin-off tech. What's the hold-up?! I might just consider an AMD laptop because of the hand-sitting that OEMs are doing with Optimus...

This time around Intel isn't paying companies not to buy AMD anymore, as such they can buy both Intel and AMD without worry of Intel jacking up their prices. Also lets face it, the AMD cpus are almost as good as Intel but cost in many cases significantly less, plus a cheaper and better performing graphics solution.

As far as corporate customers go, if AMD has a cheaper laptop cpu+gpu combo than the Intel solution with relative performance, I know what my work would be buying.

I find it amusing after all this time that Intel continues to drag bottom on their so called "GPU"s. Everyone knows they are the bottom of the barrel, and yet they continue to push out crappy graphics processors. With AMD and ATI together now, you would think it might make sense for Intel to at least CONSIDER dropping their crap and licensing and/or just buying out nVidia.

Its great to see AMDs increased competitiveness in all fields. I was given an HD 5870 by Dave Baumann, the product manager for the ATI 58xx series to give to my severely disabled friend. AMD and ATI have a lot of heart and deserve all the success they have earnt. They are truely an inspiring group.

imho this leap for amd is just momentarily... like the article said... intels cpu architecture is plainly better... atm this is good for amd since they really need some good deals, but if they don't move fast intel's ipg will become as strong as a middle ranged ati graphic... then no matter how cheap amd/ATIs offer is... they gonna be stuck in low end notebooks (and possibly have the aura of a the brand celeron wrapped around them ^^)

I find it amusing after all this time that Intel continues to drag bottom on their so called "GPU"s. Everyone knows they are the bottom of the barrel, and yet they continue to push out crappy graphics processors.

Perhaps because at least 90% of the computer market doesn't NEED to play Crysis! Intel's GPUs (one of which I'm using now) work absolutely perfect for most day-to-day use, and dedicated GPUs spend most of their life idle while still eating up to a hundred watts full-power to put text on the screen. It makes me sick to see people bashing Intel GPUs when they're all that's necessary for most people. And for that matter, I actually steer clear of laptops and systems with dedicated GPUs, based on the number of failures GPUs exhibit just for the fact that they're overpowered (and underutilized). I'm now shopping around for a new laptop and I won't even consider one that has only a dedicated chip, or only an IGP. It's GOT to have both. I want that dedicated power, but I also want it to go away when I don't need it. That's the direction I hope manufacturers are going, but it will be an uphill battle against IGPs that work JUST FINE for almost every computer user in the market.

Wow, AMD has more design wins with its rubbish processors. Everyone please don't buy any laptop which contained this rubbish except if you are amdiots (AMD idiotic fanboys). (I believe arstechnica members will not buy rubbish processor from AMD).

Wow, AMD has more design wins with its rubbish processors. Everyone please don't buy any laptop which contained this rubbish except if you are amdiots (AMD idiotic fanboys). (I believe arstechnica members will not buy rubbish processor from AMD).

Perhaps because at least 90% of the computer market doesn't NEED to play Crysis! Intel's GPUs (one of which I'm using now) work absolutely perfect for most day-to-day use, and dedicated GPUs spend most of their life idle while still eating up to a hundred watts full-power to put text on the screen. It makes me sick to see people bashing Intel GPUs when they're all that's necessary for most people.

Looking at the kind of performance metrics people use to show the failure of Intel's parts shows how far off their goals are with the part's goals. These computers are meant for offices and for non-techies everywhere. My boss doesn't care if it runs WoW. Or if I can run WoW. He cares if I can run MS Outlook, MS Office, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. If the computers can run all that, they are good to go.

Too many people assume that the Intel IGPs are meant to provide "light gaming" as defined by a last-gen FPS at medium settings, maybe at a ssomewhat older resolution like 1280x1024. But that's not even most people's definition of "minimum box." That's "causal gaming box" for most people. For people whose idea of a "value graphics card" means a Radeon 5770 ("Sure, it's not the 5850, but the highest-performers always cost extra. Got to keep the feet on the ground sometimes!"), the idea of Intel IGP is of course going to be absurdly low-powered.

The problem with hanging out in tech circles is that it's easy to forget how many non-techs there are out there. How many people don't understand the difference between Firefox and Internet Explorer, who don't even know if the Celeron D was good or crap because they can't recall ever hearing of a Celeron D. These are people whose idea of gaming means Facebook flash games. Crysis is so far off their map, you might as well label it "Here are Heathen Lands Best Untraveled."

Perhaps because at least 90% of the computer market doesn't NEED to play Crysis! Intel's GPUs (one of which I'm using now) work absolutely perfect for most day-to-day use, and dedicated GPUs spend most of their life idle while still eating up to a hundred watts full-power to put text on the screen. It makes me sick to see people bashing Intel GPUs when they're all that's necessary for most people.

The problem that's becoming more relevant WRT Intel's graphics is that they don't have GPGPU support. It's not just a question of games they can't play, it's productivity software they're slower at.

Wow, AMD has more design wins with its rubbish processors. Everyone please don't buy any laptop which contained this rubbish except if you are amdiots (AMD idiotic fanboys). (I believe arstechnica members will not buy rubbish processor from AMD).

Could you tell me why AMD processors are rubbish?

AMD processors are sucking more power juices than Intel processors yet still ass hole in performance.

Jon Stokes you forgot to tell that you can get Intel notebook with AMD switchable graphicslooks like the intel antitrust roadblock has been removed, so amd can get to customersAMD can make roadkill out of any intel IGP/IPG

Wow, AMD has more design wins with its rubbish processors. Everyone please don't buy any laptop which contained this rubbish except if you are amdiots (AMD idiotic fanboys). (I believe arstechnica members will not buy rubbish processor from AMD).

Could you tell me why AMD processors are rubbish?

AMD processors are sucking more power juices than Intel processors yet still ass hole in performance.

I'm kinda wondering how Intel expects to catch up in graphics, as this is clearly becoming a pressing issue.

Larrabee sucked so bad it didn't even fail, and acquiring Nvidia would probably be difficult for antitrust reasons. The R&D to make a competitive GPU would take years, and might not be competitive by the time it came out.

Maybe they'll do what they did with PowerVR graphics in some of their Atom systems and license a GPU, this time from Nvidia.

Here's how it's going down. Intel will buy Nvidia after Fermi fails to bring in the money Nvidia needs so badly. They we shall have a new graphics wars.

The problem is not with the graphics. AMD mobile processors offer significantly worse battery life. Intel CPU + NVIDIA/AMD GPU actually makes the most sense at the mid/high end (and is what most OEM's offer).

And now you have a situation where computer makers don't want to look like they are helping Intel with antitrust behaviour as it appears Dell did. You probably also have Intel who needs to make sure AMD catches up a little so they can say "hey look we aren't stopping them from being successful"

Anyhow, I don't like to take credit away from AMD, but as it's been already mentioned, this upswing came out of no where, and after AMD got a shit kicking over the past few years, this surge is surprising.

Jumping Jack: graphics performance is becoming more important in the enterprise as well. Apart from engineering workstations, which have always been around, you now have tons of 2-D graphics applications for video conferencing, web-based training and sales support that require HD level video streaming.

It isn't the same level of graphics as 3-D FPS or MMORPG, but it's enough that you want something in the range of the HD4200 or possibly the HD3200 to give a professional appearance.

Jumping Jack: graphics performance is becoming more important in the enterprise as well. Apart from engineering workstations, which have always been around, you now have tons of 2-D graphics applications for video conferencing, web-based training and sales support that require HD level video streaming.

It isn't the same level of graphics as 3-D FPS or MMORPG, but it's enough that you want something in the range of the HD4200 or possibly the HD3200 to give a professional appearance.

++ For the win. If it was just about pushing pretty text onto the screen? There are plenty of companies Intel could have bought. But with the above and both Apple and Microsoft asking more of GPUs the future is clear. As for the bump with AMD? One word, recession.

The problem with having a not-so-great GPU in the same package as the processor die is that if you want to buy Intel's latest and greatest mobile CPU, you have to buy its GPU along with it. So you have to pay for this GPU that isn't very good and that you may not want, and then if you want real graphics performance you have to then go out and pay for an NVIDIA GPU to go with it (via Optimus or Apple's proprietary solution).

This is basically my problem. I'm looking to build a new system, and I need a decent GPU, but the Core i7 is entirely too expensive. And the Core i3/5 both have that stupid GPU built in, which consumes power and precious PCIe lanes, along with adding on cost. Realistically I'll probably just end up getting a nice Core2 CPU as they're just soo much cheaper without much of a performance hit.